


if we're still alive my regrets are few

by serenityfails



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Head Injury, M/M, Pre-Slash, Trent Reznor's bedside manner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-23 22:24:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14942471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenityfails/pseuds/serenityfails
Summary: "Hank," Connor says, whisper-soft. "You need to stay awake. I have to make sure you aren't concussed.""You got pretty eyes," Hank says sleepily.





	if we're still alive my regrets are few

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whitachi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitachi/gifts).



> Thanks to all my beautiful, terrible Jerries. No thanks to David Cage, whom I will one day defeat in single combat.

There's a red light flashing in the corner of Hank's eye, but he can't focus on it-- it's swimming around, making him dizzy, and he blindly reaches out for something to steady himself on. His hand lands on Connor's leg, oddly cool beneath Connor's clothes. His brain feels too big for his skull, and he's sick to his stomach. It's hard to tell if throwing up would make him feel better or worse, and he pales in the uncomfortable tug of war between the two.

Connor's hands are cool as well when they brush his unruly gray hair away from his eyes. It's nice. He tries to focus on that instead of the harsh lights, closes his eyes and leans into it.

"Lieutenant?"

His memory starts to catch up with his senses: there was an assault, the latest of several attempts at stealing an android's blood straight from their body. The assailant fled into an abandoned building, he and his partner pursued. There was a fight-- the assailant had a loose pipe in his hand, he was swinging for Connor's head-- but Connor's the only one of himself there is anymore, there won't ever be a replacement, not for _his_ \--

"Lieutenant? Lieutenant. _Hank._ "

Hank's eyes flutter open again, blurring, sending daggers of pain into his skull. Connor's hands are gentle but firm on the sides of his head, holding him steady. The light dims; Hank looks, and all he sees this time are dark brown eyes, warm in shadow.

"Hank," Connor says, whisper-soft. "You need to stay awake. I have to make sure you aren't concussed."

"You got pretty eyes," Hank says sleepily. Connor's thumbs are rubbing delicate circles against his temples. Everything hurts, but those two points radiate outwards, dulling the ache, making the sick feeling burning in his gut subside. As his vision clears, Hank sees Connor's LED blinking erratically, from red to yellow.

"You too," Connor says. The faintest smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, but it doesn't smooth the worried divot between his brows. "So keep them open, all right?"

Connor looks at him unblinking, analyzing. Hank feels swaddled and oddly exposed all at once. The battered drywall isn't doing as much to hold him steady as Connor's deceptively strong hands cradling his jaw. After a minute, Connor lets out a sigh, even though Hank knows it's just programming, that he doesn't need to breathe at all. Connor does a lot of things that aren't strictly necessary these days.

"How do you feel? Any dizziness, nausea, confusion?"

"Feel like shit," Hank says. "Oughta kick your ass."

"I'm sorry," Connor says, deflating, and now Hank feels like a genuine dick. "It's my fault. I should have been faster. If I had incapacitated--"

"Shut up, kid, you're making my head hurt." Hank shuts his eyes again, chancing Connor's disapproval. It's hard to look at him sometimes. His sincerity makes Hank's face burn. "I'm the idiot who threw myself at him. Just..." Hank's hand gropes blindly for Connor's, resting at his temple, and he pats it absently. Connor's synthetic skin is growing warmer from prolonged contact. "Don't get yourself hurt, okay? It's not like they're just gonna send me a new Connor this time."

The synthetic skin on Connor's left cheek is scuffed, his chassis exposed. The skin will heal itself after a moment, Hank knows. The same couldn't be said for Connor's processors, for his memories. Not for the first time, Hank finds himself stuck on mortality, on the terrifying fragility of it. Connor had seemed uncannily indestructible when they met. For all his strengths, it's hard to reckon with how untrue that ended up being.

"You..." Hank's seen Connor stumble over his words very few times. His jaw is working with the effort. "You always put yourself between me and danger, but barring a complete shutdown, if a part of me breaks, I can replace it. I can't replace _you_." Connor's hands slip away from the sides of Hank's face. Hank tries not to think about the pit that's deepening in his stomach. "Come on, Lieutenant," Connor says, sliding an arm under Hank's armpit and around his back, lifting with strength incongruous with his size. "You need medical attention."

"The, the guy," Hank mutters, grimacing as his balance is thrown off, a hand braced against the dusty wall.

"I called for backup as soon as we located the perpetrator. He's unconscious on the first floor." Connor neglects to mention how he became unconscious and on the first floor when the last time Hank saw him he was conscious on the third floor, where Hank is currently barely keeping his goo-brain contained in his skull. "They're handling it. _We're_ going to the hospital."

"No." Something lurches in Hank's chest. "No, fuck no."

"You have a head injury," Connor says, insistently pulling Hank to his feet. He is fully pressed against Hank's side-- they seem to keep ending up like this somehow. It still doesn't distract Hank from how every atom in his body is screaming its displeasure, sending goosebumps down his arms, the fine hairs pricking up as if electrified.

"No _fucking_ hospitals," Hank barks, and immediately regrets it when the sound of his own voice hits his ears like a sledgehammer. Connor frowns at him, softness and steel all at once.

"I only have basic first aid programming, I'm not a neurologist. You need to go to the hospital."

Bile rises in Hank's throat, and the urge to vomit reintroduces itself. His skin is buzzing. He has to get out of here, but his limbs are too slow, and his head's full of mud. He can already smell it somehow, that hospital smell, death and antiseptic, clinging to him three years later.

"No," Hank says. He grabs Connor by the shoulder, slipping as he grasps the fabric of Connor's jacket. Hank can barely feel his fingers. He's all pins and needles, like his whole body is trying to fall asleep. Connor holds steady, grasping Hank's elbows. "I can't-- I can't."

Connor stops arguing. He stands there in silence, staring at Hank like he's a puzzle Connor's trying to solve. Hank can hear the other officers below, the electronic blips of their radios as they assess Connor's work. Connor's eyes are high-definition cameras with decorative lenses made to simulate the human eye, but they are as inseparably part of Connor as Hank's, and Hank thinks they might be the nicest pair he's ever seen.

"Okay." Connor relents, though Hank can tell it's twisting him up inside. Relief washes through him, leaving him drained. He just wants to go home, turn out all the lights in Detroit, and become one with his couch in perfect darkness. "I'll take you home. You're going to rest, and I'm going to watch you for any sign that it's getting worse, and the second it does, we're going to the damn hospital." 

"Like it when you cuss," Hank says, rather than any of the far more embarrassing things he could be saying.

"Perhaps I should do it more often, then, to see if it'll make you a better listener," Connor says, and without further preamble he bends down, slips his arm under Hank's knees, and lifts him up bodily, carrying him in a manner Hank absolutely refuses to think of as _bridal style_. It's as embarrassing as it is a relief to be off his unsteady feet.

"Connor, what the fuck," Hank yelps, struggling half-heartedly. "You can't just pick a guy up like that!"

"I think you'll find I just did," Connor says with his shit-eating little smirk. Connor's always been a smart ass, even before he went deviant, and Hank's told him as much on a few occasions.

"Put me the fuck down!"

"You're not walking down two flights of stairs in your condition."

"My _condition_ , what am I, pregnant?"

"Yes," Connor says. "Congratulations. It's a traumatic brain injury." He carries Hank to the stairwell, without a bit of outward evidence that it's any effort at all. "I'll put you down when we're on solid ground."

Connor is true to his word. Hank's wobbily back on his feet even before anyone can see his ass being gently cradled by a 160 lb. plastic twink. The victim is safely being interviewed by another android, a recent hire of the DPD. The perp is being loaded onto a stretcher. Connor is steadily ushering Hank into the passenger's seat of his own car.

Connor has never driven his car before, but the question of whether CyberLife bothered to program their prototypes with the ability to drive an antique with no self-driving functionality is swiftly answered when Connor turns the key and shifts gears. Trent Reznor growls something angsty out of Hank's speakers, and Connor doesn't silence the stereo, but rather turns it down to its lowest setting, a gentler roar of anguish. Hank feels a surge of fondness for this weird fucking robot he's somehow befriended.

His head hurts. But Connor will take him home, and give him a glass of water with extra-strength ibuprofen, and sit in the corner watching him while he sleeps like an absolute creep, and Hank will appreciate every weird-ass second of it, because apparently that's where he's at in his life now.

"Hank," Connor says. Mr. Reznor's shouts have faded out into gently dissonant synthesizers. It's almost homey. Connor isn't looking away from the road, but Hank's eyes are half shut against the glare of the streetlights anyhow. Connor is a very precise driver. "Thank you," he says softly, and they turn toward home.


End file.
